A court in Murcia has clarified the unclear boundary between the amount of marijuana that can be legally grown for personal consumption and the amount at which a plantation can be said to be intended for drug trafficking. The fifth department of the Murcia court estimated that the possession of 100 plants between two people, one of whom is a non-smoker, is “strong evidence” that they are intended for drug trafficking. The judges point out that the five plants that the Netherlands is allowed to maintain for personal use, or the six plants and 480 grams of collected product that Uruguay allows, are more appropriate amounts than the 100 that those now convicted had in Cartagena. In addition, the “indicative tables” created by the Supreme Court in 2001 that a consumer can collect without falling into a crime are refined based on the National Institute of Toxicology’s calculation of a hemp smoker’s consumption in five days: 25 grams of hashish or 100 grams of marijuana. The area pointed out by the Murcian judges is between two and 28 bushes.
The judgment confirms with nuances the sentence imposed by the Criminal Court No. 3 of Cartagena, which sentenced two people to prison terms (two and one year) and a fine of 7,000 euros for a serious crime against public health, but now contains an argument that what makes sense to grow for your own consumption and what doesn’t. The two men were arrested after they were surprised by the plantation at an industrial warehouse in Cartagena’s Cabezo Beaza Industrial Park. There they had accumulated 100 bushes in bloom, 36 in the drying process and more than 30 kilos of product.
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At first, of course, the detainees claimed that it was personal consumption, which no judge believed. In fact, they only applied the mitigating circumstance of drug addiction to one of them because the other convict complicated the tests to prove that he was a user.
The court devotes most of the five-page ruling to establishing the boundaries between self-sufficiency and human trafficking. The judges declare that “the number of plants is significantly higher than could reasonably be imagined in a home-consumption crop.” They accept the argument of another branch of the Murcia court, which acquitted the defendant, that “the cultivation of Cannabis sativa is a “It is a closed cycle that includes both planting and harvesting and only produces one harvest per year, so the collection carried out by the defendant must be understood as relating to one year.” But they emphasize that it is in this case it was only two floors. And they also cite another Second Section ruling from 2022, which condemned a case involving 28 plants weighing 1,008 grams and 19% in assets. This latest case, it is said, “is much more similar to the one being tried here.”
The ruling, which is still subject to appeal, reflects the “guidelines” set by the Supreme Court to decide when the amount of marijuana accumulated at home is intended for personal use or for the conduct of an illegal business. However, he explains that this table cannot be applied without examining the individual case, since “possession for the purpose of trafficking is punished, and not possession for personal use, so the purpose of trafficking must be proven in the same way as any other element of this type .” .
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The judges note that countries such as Holland have allowed the maximum production of five cannabis plants for personal use and Uruguay, in its Law 19,972, tolerates domestic planting, cultivation and harvesting for personal consumption, including up to six plants and the harvested Product to a maximum of 480 grams. With all these elements, he confirms the belief with this argument: “We must come to the conclusion that growing more than 100 marijuana plants, with a weight much higher than what is considered general criterion is assigned by the presumption of self-consumption, and in a The fact that the number of plants is significantly higher than that permitted in legislation that expressly authorizes cultivation for self-consumption implies a strong indication for the determination of the Trade, which is supported by the reasons set out in the contested judgment.” Only the penalty is reduced because the already dry buds had a low THC content (tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive component) of 1.2%.
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